


with teeth sharper and blood hotter

by crickets



Category: Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: Big Bang, F/M, M/M, Multi, The Vampire Diaries Big Bang, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-02
Updated: 2011-10-02
Packaged: 2017-10-24 06:01:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/259849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crickets/pseuds/crickets
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stefan escapes from Klaus and returns to Mystic Falls. He is followed by the hybrid, and the town pays for his mistake. Mystic Falls is abandoned. Stefan embarks with Caroline and Tyler. On the road and off, we follow the threesome for the next decade.</p>
            </blockquote>





	with teeth sharper and blood hotter

**Author's Note:**

>   
> [ART + VID](http://gigglemonster.livejournal.com/250740.html) by gigglemonster
> 
>  
> 
> [FIC ON LIVEJOURNAL](http://crickets.livejournal.com/473160.html)

Mornings are quiet in Mystic Falls.

There are always those first tentative moments of each day, a mug of coffee warm in Tyler’s hand, Caroline’s eyes looking toward the morning sun out of his bedroom window, when the hope that all of them try to deny still exists wakes. It yawns, stretches, and announces its presence like a silent alarm. They draw breaths a little more slowly than usual, Caroline curls next to him, and they don’t kiss. For two minutes out of every day, they just wait.

 _Will today be the day?_

Caroline remembers one morning with Stefan. He stays with her one night after she turns. They don’t sleep, just lie there in the bed, Caroline’s eyes softening with exhaustion, Stefan drawing circles on her skin with his fingertips, kissing her on her forehead when the tears come. In the morning when the sun creeps into the room and she, once again, doesn’t burst into flames, Caroline kisses him, and he kisses her back. She remembers thinking he tasted like cherry lip gloss, traces of Elena left on his lips. It doesn’t last long, and when she pulls back Stefan holds her chin in his hands, pushes her hair behind her ears.

 _“You know I’ll always be here for you, right?”_ Stefan says.

She knows he doesn’t just mean today or next week: but until one or both of them are dead and gone. Katherine and Damon, the ones who made her what she is today, don’t seem to share that same sentiment. And she is thankful for Stefan in this moment. Not because they feel no responsibility towards her, but because without him? They would be all she had: the veritable prince and princess of darkness. The shadow cast over Stefan’s eyes that morning betrays the burden of so much time that he has carried, and a heavy truth that Caroline now faces.

Caroline only nods, mutters “I know,” and they never speak of it, that morning, or their kiss, ever again.

“What’re you thinking about?” Tyler’s voice pulls Caroline from her reverie.

She stirs a bit, curls a hand around his bicep, glancing up to catch a knowing look in his eyes. “Same thing you are,” Caroline tells him. And Tyler nods.

“I know,” he says, leaning down to capture his lips with hers.

“Let’s sleep in,” she says after a few minutes, and Tyler sets his coffee down on the nightstand at his side, pulls the blanket over them.

He knows how Caroline gets when she thinks of Stefan, knows how much he means to her. It’s been a year, and still she gets this look on her face in the quiet of the morning. And it’s not as though Tyler isn’t thinking of him too in those moments. _They all do._ But he worries about Caroline. Because _he_ can accept that Stefan may never be coming back again. He can even bring himself to believe it if he tries hard enough. Of course, when he thinks about Stefan out at the old Gilbert property, that wooden bullet pressed against his heart, Tyler can’t imagine that Stefan would ever give up if he had a choice. But it’s that choice that’s the question. And Tyler doesn’t believe that Caroline can ever accept that he’s gone for good: that Stefan’s choices have been taken from him by Klaus.

Caroline reaches behind them and draws the curtains.

-

When he wakes up that morning, Stefan knows that today is the day. Instinct is one thing, but this is something else. Through his delirium, and the bars of his cage, and deep in the ground where Klaus keeps him in the basement of an old house just outside of town, Stefan can smell it on the air.

Despite the skepticism that settles deep in his chest, and despite the fact that it hurts him to move, he’s so starved, _Stefan laughs._

In the afternoon, Klaus makes his way down the stairs, his fingers dripping with the scent of human blood.

“Are you ready to apologize yet?” he asks through the bars, the question the same as it always is.

Stefan just chuckles to himself, his dry lips cracked.

 _Klaus’s eyes go yellow._

-

It’s the first night of the summer carnival, and Caroline is no longer a welcome guest. She’s used to this by now. Her own house, Bonnie’s, Elena’s, and the Lockwood mansion (with Carol Lockwood back off of vervain, thanks to Tyler) are the only places left in town where she can go back and forth freely, unless you count the Salvatore boarding house, _which she doesn’t_. Somehow, without Stefan there, she can’t seem to bring herself to cross over the threshold without Tyler’s hand clasped firmly in hers, and Damon has made it perfectly clear how he feels about werewolves, even the friendly ones.

“ _Too many bad memories_ ,” she once explains to Elena, and she tries not to let on that she can see a familiar look of guilt in Elena’s eyes.

“Well if you’re not going, then we’re not going,” Bonnie paces back and forth in the garden outside the Lockwood estate and Jeremy rolls his eyes. Tyler elbows him when he catches the look, and Caroline pretends she doesn’t see the exchange.

But, Jeremy’s right. After everything, a stupid carnival is the least of their worries, but when she’d gotten the anonymous threatening phone call that morning, undoubtedly from one of the council members, warning her not to show up “or eat stake,” it had rattled her.

Bonnie reminds Caroline, once again, that she never had the chance to graduate with her friends or even finish high school, and asserts that, “They can’t just ban you from everything. This is America, after all.”

Caroline grips Bonnie’s hand when she comes to a stop in front of her and pulls her into a hug. It had taken Bonnie a long time to accept Caroline as a vampire, and now look at her: waging a one-woman war for vampire rights right here in Tyler’s backyard.

“It’s just how it is. I’ve accepted it,” Caroline says. “I’m fine.” She flashes that smile, the one she knows Tyler will recognize as a grade-A phony. “I’m fine,” she says again.

-

 _He runs_.

Stefan runs at a human’s pace. It’s at once too slow _and_ too fast. He stumbles out of the woods and crumples on the ground, the lights of a pickup trunk blinding him before it swerves to miss him.

He somehow manages to make it across the road and finds himself limping along the path of a familiar field. _Home_. He’s almost home, but the two mouthfuls of blood he was able to swallow before Klaus had pulled the guard from his grasp were not nearly enough.

He needs to get somewhere safe, somewhere people know him and where he won’t be able to hurt anybody.

 _And he needs to do it before the sunrise._

-

The night is hot, one of the last of the really hot summer days in Virginia, and Caroline lets Tyler lead her out to the pond behind his house.

She smells the cotton candy before she sees it.

“It’s not the same,” Tyler says, gesturing to the plastic canister that sits on a blanket in the grass. “But I thought it would be nice.”

Caroline elbows him and pulls him down with her as she sits cross legged on the blanket. “I love it.”

There’s something about those sugary sweet morsels melting on her tongue that make her forget about the threats from earlier, that makes her remember what it was like when she was a kid. She tells Tyler about her first carnival. Or at least, the first carnival she can remember. It was before her dad left, and she recalls being bombarded by all the lights, the music, the heat, the food, the people... everything. “I just remember thinking how happy everyone was,” she tells him. “It was infectious. Like we were all breathing the same air and thinking the same thoughts and feeling the same feelings. I can’t explain it.”

Tyler takes another piece of cotton candy. Kisses her, pressing the pink fluff into her mouth with his tongue. “You suck,” she swats at him.

“You love it,” Tyler says.

Caroline giggles.

Tyler tells her about one of his last carnivals before his dad died. Vicki had been following him around all night, berating him about Matt. “She was _clearly_ jealous,” he tells Caroline. He tells her that Vicki had been suspicious of the two best friends for a while, and with good reason, but this is not news to Caroline.

“I still can’t believe you two...” Caroline trails off.

Tyler’s cheeks go crimson and he shakes his head at her.

“Oh, please,” Caroline says. “It’s hot. As a bloodsucker, I think I can afford to be a little controversial.”

“Well, he _was_ a really good kisser,” Tyler teases.

“I know!” Caroline laughs.

Tyler nudges her and gives her a look before continuing his story. Vicki finally cornered him and kissed him for the first time. He hadn’t ever thought of her like that before, but there in the moonlight, a sheen of sweat across her collarbone, the smell of funnel cake and corn dogs on the air, and the way she’d looked at him? He finally saw her for the first time. “And that’s when my dad showed up,” he says. “He dragged me to the car, slapped me with the back of his hand, and told me never to bring that ‘tramp’ around my mother.”

Caroline looks at him, horrified, despite having heard a dozen stories just like this one.

“I was never a huge fan of carnivals anyway,” Tyler shrugs. “They overcharge, the prizes are dumb, and none of the freaks are ever real.”

Caroline nudges him. “I know of a couple of freaks who could really shake up that sideshow.”

-

The air fills his lungs like needles stuffed inside a deflated balloon.

There’s something moving to the side of him in the dark. He can smell the canine before he can make it out. It’s an old German Shepherd, and from the sound of its footsteps, it walks with a severe limp.

It doesn’t run or try to get away. It doesn’t even seem to notice the hungry vampire standing not more than fifty feet away. Instinctually, the animal knows that he poses no threat.

Stefan collapses on the ground, the beginnings of his desiccation finally overtaking him. He ran too fast, too far. His muscles can no longer bear the weight of him and he curls into the cool grass, his body drawn to the moisture on the ground. _He needs to sleep._ He needs to sleep just a little while and then he’ll be able to make it the rest of the way. His breath comes out in a painful wheeze and he mutters a single word.

 _Elena._

-

The moment they step out of the car, both Tyler and Caroline know something is wrong. Tyler sniffs the air and Caroline instinctually turns her gaze to her front porch, where there on the ground, she can make out a dark shadow that can only be one thing.

“Stefan?” Caroline feels her stomach drop and she rushes to him.

Tyler swears, and is by her side in an instant and they both drop to their knees.

Caroline meets Tyler’s eyes. “He’s alive,” she says, both worry and relief escaping her lips in those two words. “He’s alive.”

-

Back at the mansion, Stefan collapses on the hardwood floor before Caroline can get him to the bed in one of the numerous guest rooms.

“Just leave me here,” he gasps. “Leave me!”

“Stefan,” her voice is desperate. “You need to drink!” She holds the blood bag to his mouth. But Stefan has already lost consciousness again.

Tyler kneels beside him and begins to shake him. He shouts his name, but the vampire doesn’t stir. He looks to Caroline. “What should we do?”

Caroline grips the bag with both hands and bites into it, taking in a mouthful of blood before leaning forward and pressing her lips to Stefan’s in a messy kiss. She deposits what she can into his mouth, pushing her tongue between his lips to part them. Stefan stirs, but only a little, and Caroline takes some more blood from the bag and tries again. This time, Stefan responds, his throat closing as he swallows what he can. He reaches out to grab the back of her head, crushing her lips to his more roughly in an effort to get more blood. Caroline deepens the kiss, letting him take as much as he needs from her, when they part, Caroline is out of breath and some of the color has returned to Stefan’s face.

Caroline sits up and Tyler takes the bag from her when she holds it out to him, careful not to spill any. “Do you think that will be enough?” he asks. Stefan’s eyes remain closed, and his breathing begins to even out again, his fingers still entwined tightly with Caroline’s.

She nods and gestures to the blanket behind Tyler, which he hands to her. “I’m going to stay with him,” she says. “He’ll be okay until the morning, but if he wakes up I need to be here.”

Tyler cups her face in his hands, brushes his thumb over her bloody lips and kisses her before he gets up to leave the room.

“Keep the blinds closed,” she calls absently as she stretches to reach for one of the pillows on the bed. “He doesn’t have his ring.”

-

In the morning, Bonnie drops by before Stefan is awake. She is dressed in sweats with her hair pulled back into a ponytail, the early wake-up call leaving her with very little time. She recites her incantations quietly from a dark corner of the room and Caroline sits by his side in case he should wake up.

When she’s done, Bonnie places the cool ring into Caroline’s palm.

“Does Elena know?” she asks. “Damon?”

Caroline shakes her head and walks her friend to the door. “We’ll talk about it when he wakes up. Let him decide what to do.”

Bonnie nods. “Is he gonna be okay?”

Caroline looks over to Stefan, realizing she might have cleaned the bloodstains from the corner of his lips before letting Bonnie into the room.

She takes in a shaky breath, and breathes out the words she is afraid to admit are true. “I don’t know.”

-

When Stefan wakes, Tyler is sitting in a chair on the other side of the room. The sun shining through the half-open curtains is casting shadows across his face and he lifts his hand, taking note of the plain silver band that now adorns his index finger. He sits up and notices there’s a bottle filled with thick red liquid beside him on the floor, and he reaches out for it.

“Afternoon,” Tyler nods. “Brought you something.”

Stefan gags, sputtering droplets of the blood onto the floor. “Pig’s blood?”

Tyler walks over to him and reaches out his hand. “Caroline’s idea,” he shrugs. “She didn’t know if…”

Stefan shakes his head and takes Tyler’s hand, pulls himself to stand beside him. “No, it’s fine.” He takes another drink, swallows hard. “Where _is_ Caroline?”

Tyler nods, gesturing toward the bed behind Stefan’s shoulder, where Stefan can now see a mess of blonde hair peeking out from underneath the sheets. “She tried to stay awake,” Tyler tells him as he moves to stand beside him, both of them watching her. “Hasn’t slept a wink since you got back two nights ago. She finally nodded off about a half an hour ago, arguing the whole time.”

Stefan lowers his head and grins, places a hand on Tyler’s shoulder.

“That’s our girl,” he says.

-

When she wakes up later that night, Stefan sits by her side on the bed. Caroline is not surprised to see him up and about, and she crawls into a sitting position. The look she offers him is telling, and her hand comes to rest across his jawbone as she studies his eyes.

“You look better,” she tells him, presses her forehead to his.

Stefan closes his eyes and leans into her touch. “Thank you,” he says. “I would have been dust by sunrise if you hadn’t come along.”

Caroline frowns and shakes her head, knowing that he’s giving her too much credit. “So, are you going to tell me?”

Stefan takes a breath and begins his tale. It took him months, but he overcame the pull inside of himself to feed, to hunt, to kill. The hybrid had not been happy. Klaus refused to compel him, they hybrid wanted Stefan of his own free will, “or he wanted me in chains,” Stefan tells her.

Caroline leans in, curling against him, and rests her head on his shoulder. “So, what did he do?”

“After I got away, he tracked me to Virginia,” Stefan says. “But I made easy work of it. He knew I would come here, so he was already waiting for me before I even arrived. It was stupid of me.”

Caroline nods, knowing it is a mistake she herself would have easily made.

“Klaus wanted me to suffer,” he says. “And suffer, I did.” He recalls with great accuracy how Klaus had taken a liking to infecting Stefan with the bite of his wolf and then waiting until he was at death’s door to cure him. Other times, he would simply let Stefan waste away until he was practically desiccated. _Then_ , he would bring Stefan a child, lock the human up in the cage along with him, _and simply wait_.

“I resisted,” he says. “At least I tried. But when the delirium took over I had no control,” he went on. Stefan would wake up, blood pumping soundly through his veins, a decomposing corpse at his side, and no memory of any attack. The last girl almost starved to death before Klaus gave up and put her out of her misery. “She looked a little like you,” he adds.

Caroline closes her eyes at the thought. “It sounds awful,” she tells him, laces her fingers through his.

“It was,” Stefan agrees, and he tucks a strand of hair behind her ear before continuing. “The day I got out, the guard on duty made a stupid, simple mistake.” Stefan had known that Klaus’s choice to hire a human guard was going to work to his advantage sooner or later. The guard, who he remembers now as being particularly cruel, would have been dead in an instant if Stefan had been at his full capacity, but Klaus was there and Stefan was weak. But somehow, _he got away._

“I still don’t understand why Klaus didn’t follow me, drag me back there.”

Caroline stops breathing at the thought. “You don’t think he’s done with you?”

“Honestly, I’m afraid to find out.”

“Well, what next?” Caroline probes. “What if he _is_ coming for you?”

Stefan cups Caroline’s chin, the answer that both of them know is true remaining unsaid: that he can’t stay in Mystic Falls and that his very being here is a danger to everyone he loves. But as neither of them can bear to hear those words out loud, instead, he simply says, “I need to talk to Elena.”

-

Stefan goes into the sun, stepping outside for the first time since his return.

Elena is waiting for him at the falls, a spot she picked herself.

There’s a moment where he just stands there before her, taking her in. She is the thing that kept him going, day by day. Now it’s up to him to gather the courage to say goodbye, and he only just got here.

After a moment, Elena says his name and flings herself into his arms. She is warm and soft and he feels like he could die, right there.

 _Finally_.

“I thought you were dead,” she tells him, pulling back from their embrace. She lifts her hand to run it along his face, his cheek, his lips, as if she can’t quite believe that he’s real.

Stefan kisses her then, because it is the most natural thing in the world to him. Elena opens up, kisses him back, and he can taste the salty tears that are falling down her cheeks and onto their lips.

After, their eyes wet with tears, Stefan asks the question that he has been dreading. “Damon?”

Elena shifts her weight from one foot to the other, casts her eyes downward, and that is all the answer that Stefan needs.

“It’s okay,” he tells her and squeezes her hand. “I get it. He’d be here with you now if anything else were true.”

Elena reaches for him again, her hand going to the back of his neck, willing him to look at her. He imagines several things she might say in this moment, _It’s complicated, It’s been a year, We never meant to hurt you, It just happened_ and he knows all of those things are true without having to hear them.

“Don’t,” he stops her. “You don’t have to…”

“Stefan,” Elena pleads, wanting to say something, anything.

“I have something to tell you,” he says. And Elena listens. He tells her everything he told Caroline, every excruciating detail. He even tells her things that he did not tell Caroline, sins he committed in the months before finally regaining control.

“I’m still weak,” he tells her, his conclusion. “And he’s coming for me. He still thinks that you’re dead. We need to keep it that way. As soon as I’m strong enough I’m leaving here. If I stay, Klaus _will_ be back.”

They kiss again, and this time it has the distinct flavor of goodbye. “Stefan, I love you so much,” Elena tells him this as he turns to go, a gentle sob escaping her throat with the words.

He stops, but does not turn around.

“I know.”

-

Klaus descends upon Mystic Falls in a sweeping flourish.

The carnival is his first stop, and when Matt—who had been working the Mystic Grill stand that evening—stumbles into Tyler’s house covered in blood, it is obvious that Stefan has overstayed his welcome. It’s Tyler who rushes to him, and Matt crumples in his arms, the once-strong athlete dropping like a weighted rag doll against him and bringing them both crashing to the floor. Tyler reaches around Matt’s middle with one hand and covers the gaping wound in his neck with the other, the blood seeping over his fingers and onto his jeans. He calls out for Caroline and then Stefan, who gets there first.

Matt only utters one word before he passes out: “Klaus.”

Stefan bites into his wrist hastily, tries in vain to get the unconscious Matt to drink, but it is too late. Their friend is gone. Caroline and Tyler are devastated, but don’t have time to consider their loss in the frantic moments that follow.

“We need to leave.” Stefan’s voice is urgent, and it rises above Caroline’s sobs, above the sound of Tyler calling to his friend, still situated against his lap, shaking him uselessly, and it hushes them into instant silence. “ _Now_.”

The three of them meet Damon, Bonnie, and Alaric at the fairgrounds, but find only the bloody remains of a massive struggle. There is no Klaus to be found. There are no vampires or hybrids, no dead bodies. It’s just an abandoned carnival, the scent of popcorn, theater make-up, and death on the air, a scattering of food tents and booths going up in flames, and the sound of circus music playing eerily in the background.

Matt Donovan had been a message sent and received, but the meaning of what they found when they arrived remained a mystery.

-

The group gathers at the Salvatore boarding house that night, unsure of what to do next. At least three quarters of the town has gone missing, and still no bodies have been found. Caroline is forced to compel her mother to take the remaining families out of town and stay as far away as possible. The former sheriff is stubborn, and it is the only way Caroline can make sure that her mother is safe.

Over the next three days, the sky remains a dark slate, and the rain pours down over the town in buckets. The sun never makes a single appearance.

Bonnie stands at an open window on the first day. “This is magic,” she tells them all. “This isn’t natural.” None of them knows what it means, but they’re all fairly certain that it can mean nothing good.

The mood in the house is anxious and tense. Stefan holes up in his room with Caroline and Tyler to keep him company most of the time. Jeremy, Bonnie, and Elena stay in the main sitting room, and everyone takes a turn at wandering about aimlessly, as if the act holds some magical brainstorming properties.

On the second night, Caroline pulls Stefan into his bed with her and Tyler. He had been sleeping on one of the arm chairs in his room while they had taken his bed. There are plenty of rooms in the house, but nobody wants to be left alone, so everyone stays as close together as possible.

“Stay with us,” Caroline says, her voice is sleepy and low.

He complies, taking her hand in his without any complaint or protest, and curls next to them on the bed. He can feel Tyler’s heat warming him, though Caroline lies between them, and it lulls him to sleep in minutes. The implications of this one act are not clear to him at the time, but on this night, Stefan rests more soundly than he has in months.

-

“We should make a move,” Alaric says, on the afternoon of the third day, the sky still dark.

“He could have an army out there,” Bonnie reminds them, and Jeremy squeezes her hand.

Elena is the only thing keeping any of them safe. She retains the rights to the Salvatore property, and even Klaus can’t penetrate that binding. But even she understands how trapped they all are, just waiting for Klaus to pounce. “He’s right,” Elena agrees from her spot on the couch. “We can’t just do nothing.”

“Yes we can,” both Stefan and Damon say in near-perfect unison.

“And that’s exactly what we’re going to do,” Damon finishes, settling the matter.

-

On the forth morning, before daybreak, Stefan makes a decision.

 _He will go._

It’s him that Klaus wants, not anyone else.

Of course he knows that this is not true, and that Klaus will probably kill them all as soon as he gets the opportunity, just to spite Stefan. But he doesn’t know what else he is expected to do. This way, with him gone, they might at least have a chance to escape.

He is by the lake when Caroline and Tyler catch up to him. “What’s the big idea?” Caroline is fuming, and obviously hurt, and Tyler’s expression at her side seems to mirror this sentiment.

Stefan protests, and the three of them argue for several long minutes, circling each other on the rocky shore. “We’re in this together now,” Caroline insists.

“She’s right,” Tyler agrees. “We’re family.”

Not one of them notices that the sun has begun to rise as they have quarreled. Nor do they notice that the sky is free of clouds for the first time in three days, until the smoke starts to rise from the water’s surface.

“What’s happening?” one of them asks. And later, they won’t recall which one of them had said it.

The water begins to move, and they take a few, careful steps backward.

It is then that Caroline notices the empty blood bags floating upon the water’s surface. “Stefan,” she utters.

“I see it.”

A hand breaches the surface, and one by one, the people of the town of Mystic Falls – all of them newly made vampires compelled by Klaus – crawl out of the lake and burn to death on the shores.

-

The exodus is swift.

 _It is decided._

They will run, like Rose and Trevor did, and like Katherine had before them. They will run, and they will never look back.

Damon and Alaric decide to take off on their own. Bonnie, Jeremy, and Elena will go with them, but they only agree to carry the trio far enough to meet Mr. Bennett, who has gathered close by with a number of witches. “I can keep her hidden,” Bonnie says. “But I’m going to need help. My magic is not that strong alone.”

In the end, Caroline, Tyler, and Stefan leave Mystic Falls in Matt’s truck, headed nowhere in particular, no road maps, no decisions. “It’ll make the trail harder to follow,” Tyler reasons.

“You sure you want me with you?” Stefan asks, not for the first time.

Caroline rolls her eyes. “You’re not getting rid of us.” And when he takes her hand, she reminds him, “Besides, you promised.”

-

After holing up in a crappy motel outside of Wilmington for a couple of weeks, biding their time, the first real place they decide to go is a hunting cabin in Kentucky where Matt used to go with his cousins when he was a kid.

It’s Tyler’s idea, and Caroline cries for two hours in the back seat after he suggests it. Stefan finally crawls back there with her and holds her, Tyler at the wheel.

They’ve yet to talk about Matt, haven’t let themselves think of how they left his body just lying there on the floor of the Lockwood mansion. But Tyler knows they need to say goodbye, sooner or later.

 _They owe him that much._

He sings along with the radio, and the vampires in the back seat fall asleep in each other’s arms.

Tyler walks around the property, the sleepers still in the car, and he finds a fire pit on one side of the cabin. It’s a cool night, and as he gathers wood for the fire, Tyler remembers it’s the first day of autumn.

Matt would have been starting school by now, and it had been Tyler who convinced him to enroll in community college.

 _But now none of that will ever happen._

“I smelled the smoke,” Caroline says from behind him. He turns to regard her, and he is struck by her beauty, bathed in the orange light of the fire, still half-asleep with Stefan’s hoodie over her shoulders and a shoebox in her hands.

“Where’s Stefan?” he asks, and Caroline nods toward the truck.

“He said this should be a you-and-me thing,” she tells him.

They sit on the ground, going through the collection of items inside the box, a smattering of personal effects from the truck, tossing each one into the fire as they remember their friend, their lover.

Caroline pauses for a while over a ticket stub she found in the glove compartment, some stupid concert they’d gone to back when they first started dating. “I can’t believe he kept this,” she mutters. After a moment, she shoves the wrinkled paper into Stefan’s jacket pocket.

“Don’t you want anything?” Caroline asks Tyler, gesturing to the few items that are left.

“He was my best friend,” Tyler says, tossing the near-empty box into the rising flames as his eyes fill with tears. “None of this shit is going to bring him back.”

Caroline kisses him, and they make love by the fire, there on the dirty ground, with Stefan watching their silhouettes from the truck.

When the sirens sound, someone from the nearby town having reported the smoke from the fire at the abandoned property, Stefan scrambles to the front seat and starts the engine, honking the horn.

Caroline and Tyler are seated beside him in the front seat in moments, and the truck kicks up dirt and rocks as it speeds away.

-

Bonnie sends messages.

Caroline finds them in her pocket, in the glove compartment of the truck, balled up and tucked into her bag. At first it’s just some variation of the requisite _Everyone here is fine. Stay safe._ And later they include return addresses, casual details.

“They’ve settled in,” Caroline tells Tyler, showing him the latest handwritten note. “Damon, too.”

Tyler doodles something for Jeremy, and Caroline gives him a sideways look.

“He’ll get it,” he says, offering no further explanation.

She seals the letter in an envelope with no return address and drops it in a box on their way out of town.

One night before bed, at the bottom of an empty drawer, she finds a note written in Elena’s handwriting.

 _Take care of him_ , Elena writes. _Tell him I love him._

Caroline steals a glance at Stefan, laughing over a game of cards out on the lighted patio with Tyler, and she crumples the note in her hand.

-

In winter, Stefan dreams of her: of Elena. He cries out her name in pain, and Caroline slips out of bed and crosses the room to comfort him.

She doesn’t ask questions, simply crawls into the bed with him and holds him until he falls asleep.

He grips her arm so tightly she swears he would leave bruises on a human, and she has to pry herself out of his grasp when he finally drifts off.

Back in her own bed, Tyler whispers into her ear. “He okay?”

Caroline lowers her head, pressing into Tyler’s shoulder.

“No.”

-

The three of them keep moving.

Stefan is scared, and nothing that Tyler and Caroline say to him can convince him that they don’t have to keep up this break-neck pace.

“We can stop,” Caroline says, a hand over his. “We’re going to be okay, Stefan.”

Stefan just shakes his head and shoves another t-shirt into his bag. “Not yet,” he says. “It’s too soon.”

Caroline reaches for his hand, but he pulls away. He packs quickly, mutters something about not needing this before heading outside. He sits in the truck for ten minutes with the engine running, just stewing, his jaw clenched tight, waiting for them to pack their things in the hotel room.

Tyler climbs into the driver’s seat before Caroline comes out of the room. He shakes his head and offers a disapproving scoff. “She means well, man,” Tyler tells him. “You know that, don’t you?”

Stefan meets Tyler’s gaze and reaches out to turn on the radio.

-

It’s an unseasonably warm day when Caroline figures it out – when she notices him… _noticing them_.

She sits between Tyler and Stefan in the front cab of the truck, and it’s almost sunset. She’s laughing about something and Tyler kisses her, open-mouthed and drunk with her. It’s not a gesture they often make, now that it’s the three of them, and when she leans back, her hand settling momentarily – accidentally – on Stefan’s thigh, she can practically hear his heartbeat quicken, can almost smell the blood start to rise.

She’s sure that if she turned to look at him in his moment, his eyes would be a dark crimson and she can feel a familiar pull at her insides at the thought of it.

Later, when Stefan returns from the store, the hotel room they checked into that night smelling distinctly of sex, Caroline notices the way his jaw tightens the moment he steps into the room.

“Don’t get comfortable,” he tells them, taking off his jacket. “We leave tomorrow.”

-

Two months later, at a bar in New Mexico, a day before the full moon, Caroline whispers into Tyler’s ear, her breath saturated with the scent of whiskey, “I think Stefan’s lonely.”

Tyler watches the vampire for the rest of the night, pounding drink after drink and ignoring everyone in the bar save for Caroline.

Back in the hotel room, Caroline and Tyler fuck in the bed next to Stefan’s. It’s been too long since they’ve been alone and they’re too drunk and the truth is, _Tyler is testing him._

Tyler presses into Caroline and swears as he comes, his eyes fixated on the vampire pretending to sleep on the other side of the room.

Later, when he’s sure Stefan isn’t listening, he whispers into Caroline’s ear. “Do what you want,” he says. “Tomorrow night, when I turn? Do what you want.”

-

“Everything go okay?” Stefan asks when Caroline returns. They had scouted for a good place for Tyler to change three days prior, and it was a good forty minutes out of town.

“As okay as it ever goes,” Caroline sighs, collapsing on the bed. “I am getting so sick of carrying those chains everywhere we go, and wolfsbane is getting harder and harder to come by.”

Stefan sits next to her. “We do what we have to do to survive,” he says and Caroline reaches up from where she lies, runs a hand through his hair.

He looks down. “Look, I’m sorry about the way I’ve been acting.” He shrugs. “I’m just terrified of what that son of a bitch will do to us if we stop moving.”

Caroline sits up. “Shut up,” she tells him. “You know better than anyone else what Klaus is capable of. I shouldn’t question you.”

“You know you don’t have to stay with me, right?” Stefan lowers his head. “I mean, you and Tyler, you obviously have something going, and… I will be fine on my own. I will.”

Caroline shakes her head. “Not a chance, Stefan,” she says. “I told you once already.”

“I know, but…” he trails off. “But, this is your life, Caroline.”

She cuts him off with a kiss, first chastely, and then deeper, her tongue parting his lips and running along the roof of his mouth. Stefan moans, his hands moving from her neck to her waist when she climbs on top of him.

“What are you doing?” he asks, his lips brushing hers.

“What I need to survive,” she says, and pushes him down onto the bed.

Caroline lets Stefan remove her dress and panties, turning her over and pushing her into the mattress. She tears at his shirt as he trails hot kisses over her shoulders, nipping at her collarbone. He sits up on his knees, pulling the offending garment over his head. Caroline whines from the loss of contact, and she tugs him back down to her, reaching to undo his pants.

Stefan gasps when she takes him into her cool hand and positions him over her. “What about Tyler?”

Caroline looks up at him. “Tyler knows,” she tells him.

At those words, Stefan presses into her, taking her for the first time and capturing her lips in the same motion.

 _Caroline calls his name._

-

In the morning, Caroline wakes up to the warm sensation of Tyler’s hands gripping the back of her thighs.

“Morning,” he whispers, and he crawls forward, bringing his nose over her sex. His hair is sticking out in all directions, and he’s got that wild-eyed look that he often has in the days following his turn.

Caroline is suddenly aware of how very naked both she and Stefan, who still sleeps beside her, are. She yelps quietly when she feels Tyler’s tongue dart out to taste her.

“The two of you,” he says, his voice a low growl, and Caroline knows he can smell them, taste them.

She forgets sometimes that they’re animals, monsters really, and that Tyler’s wolf stays with him long after the transformation. She reaches down for him as he presses his lips to her stomach, hot and wet, his fingers ghosting over every place but where she wants them, eliciting a quiet whine from the back of her throat.

 _Beside them, Stefan stirs._

Tyler ignores him, continues focusing his attention on Caroline. He takes one nipple into his mouth, sliding two fingers into her as he does. Caroline cries out, her head thrown back, her eyes closed, and the werewolf can hear Stefan’s breath catch in his throat beside them.

Tyler looks up and reaches for the waking vampire, his lips meeting Stefan’s in a messy, clashing kiss. He shrugs his leather jacket off and he crawls over to Stefan’s side of the bed. There are no words exchanged between them, no explanations, just teeth and tongues and hands. Caroline watches them with rapt attention, not even minding that Tyler has left her alone. Stefan takes Tyler’s finger into his mouth, one still wet with traces of her, and Caroline’s hand dips to her middle when she sees the response in both their eyes, Tyler’s flashing yellow with lust and Stefan’s flooding red with the blood pumping through his veins. She moans out loud when Tyler reaches for Stefan’s cock beneath the sheets, and Stefan thrusts his hips in response. The sound draws Stefan’s attention, and the vampire reaches for her, pulling her into a rough, shared kiss.

Caroline and Stefan undress Tyler deliberately, taking care to pause at each scratch and cut, the wounds he brings home with him after every full moon.

Caroline brings her lips to a raised red mark at his hip bone, and Stefan follows, kissing in her wake.

They move slowly, quietly against each other, a tentative exchange of trust and a slow, but sure, giving in. Tyler closes his eyes, feels his heart pounding in his chest, hears Caroline’s soft moans, and tastes Stefan’s salty skin on his tongue.

He hadn’t expected this, but he takes it, he takes them, greedily, hungrily, like it was something he had wanted all along. He will leave teeth marks in it, to prove he was there, to stake his claim. Later, in the day, when he has time to think it through, he will blame his wolf for such an exchange. This is not what he wants, he will tell himself. And it is certainly not supposed to feel this good. But he knows that come nightfall it will be that much harder to force himself not want this, not need this.

And the truth is? _He won’t even bother to try._

-

The road doesn’t end for them any time soon, they keep moving from town to town, never staying in one place too long, and rarely sleeping in separate beds.

The decision to stay together is as easy as looking at Caroline’s face at the open suggestion of anything else.

If there is any thought of jealousy, or separating, or any other alternative, it is squashed immediately by the knowledge of how much she needs them both.

“Never leave me,” she says, one night, her mouth at Tyler’s neck, Stefan’s hands at her waist.

 _Never_.

-

Sharing comes naturally.

It’s as though they’ve been doing it forever, like there’s nothing else that makes sense.

One autumn night, at a hotel in Montreal, Caroline drifts off early and neither of them can get to sleep. They fuck against the wet shower wall, Stefan pressing into Tyler, the shower head turned off.

After, still wide awake, they drink Tyler’s favorite cheap beer and sit out on the balcony, watching Caroline through the window.

“I can’t decide if I should wake her up or let her sleep,” Tyler says. And the truth is, on those nights when they can’t sleep, they _always_ want to wake her up.

 _But they never do._

Stefan grins. “Let her sleep,” he says.

-

Caroline still craves human food.

The thing she hates most about not staying put is that they can’t always cook. The flavors are richer, taste better, and are more distinct now that she’s a vampire.

When they can, they stay in a place with a proper stove and a fridge, and Caroline cooks more food than the three of them would ever be able to eat before it spoils. Stefan is the better cook, but he humors her, letting her compel the local grocer into giving her whatever she wants from the shelf and not lifting a finger to help.

Tyler is in heaven, the only one among them who still has a physical need for this type of sustenance. On one occasion, he protests loudly that they haven’t had enough red meat lately.

Stefan watches the two of them, bickering playfully over a sink full of plastic hotel dishes, and thinks that they really would do just fine without him.

Caroline turns, casting a glance in his direction. “What are you thinking?” she asks.

“Nothing,” Stefan lies.

“Well, get over here,” she tells him, walking over to where he sits and reaching out a wet hand. “We need someone to put away.”

Stefan grabs her hand and lets her drag him to the sink.

-

When Stefan finally feels safe enough to settle down, they pick a place in Vermont. It’s secluded enough to give them their privacy, and yet close enough to the main roads to make any fast escape necessary.

Tyler swims every night in the days leading up to and following the full moon. He does so even in winter if the lake isn’t yet frozen over. He tells Stefan it’s because his skin is so hot, he can’t take it. The more he learns to control himself when he changes, the more angered the wolf within him becomes. It is not the first or the last time he will speak of this duality, the idea that his wolf is a separate part of him, and it fascinates Stefan.

Caroline and Stefan sit on the dock most nights while he swims. If it’s not too cold, they will swim with him, or simply dangle their legs over the edge and into the water. On the really frigid days, Tyler will jump onto the dock to steal a wet, cold kiss from each of them before diving back into the water. Caroline pouts, and Stefan just laughs.

One particularly warm summer day, Tyler tells them about his older brother who died. Caroline stops reading her magazine from atop her towel and listens to him talk.

“You had a brother?” Caroline asks. “How did I not know this?”

Tyler nods. “It was a long time ago,” he says. “Jackson Lockwood.”

A memory hits Caroline. “Jackson was a Lockwood? I…” she trails off. “He was so different. I had no idea. I was just a kid then.”

Tyler tells his brother’s tale, how he drowned trying to save his best friend on a camping trip one summer. “The kid was panicked and he struggled. He pulled Jackson under with him. By the time the life guard swam out there, they were both gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Stefan says, thinking of his own brother in that moment.

Tyler remembers thinking the world of his brother, but knowing, even back then, that they really were nothing alike. He thinks maybe that’s why his dad was always so hard on him, because Jackson had been his father’s favorite, and Tyler never quite lived up to that standard.

Caroline kisses him before he dives back into the water.

They pass the time by playing questions, a game that Stefan teaches them. It becomes a favorite on the dock. Usually they play it for fun, but sometimes they play it when it’s easier than the real answers.

This time, Caroline starts. “When will he stop needing this?”

Stefan kisses her shoulder. “Don’t you think he’ll stop when he’s ready?”

“Do you suppose this is about his brother?”

“Isn’t it obvious?”‘

Later, after Tyler has rejoined them on the dock and they have exhausted all manner of topics (and Caroline has won the game two times already), with all three of them lying across Caroline’s oversized towel, she asks, “Do you love me?”

“Is there any doubt?” both of them respond in unison. This one is not exactly fair, as it is an oft-asked question and a categorically rehearsed response.

It is the biggest question of all that always stops the game, and all of them have asked and answered it at some point.

“How long will this last?”

“Forever.”

Regardless of asker or answerer, the answer is always forever.

-

Bonnie shows up on an overcast fall afternoon that reminds Caroline of her old school days.

There’s the scent of dead leaves and possibility in the air, and suddenly there she is, in the middle of the farmer’s market and six months pregnant.

Caroline doesn’t ask how Bonnie got there, though she is pretty sure that magic was involved. Instead, she puts her hand on her friend’s belly to feel the child growing inside.

“Jeremy?” Caroline asks, and she is struck in that moment by how grown up her friend looks.

Bonnie shakes her head. “That was high school,” she shrugs. “A lot can happen in six years.”

Caroline nods, but the truth is she can hardly comprehend what Bonnie is saying. In her world, _time stands still_. In Bonnie’s, everything has changed. Caroline knows they set up a safe haven, a place where the people who escaped from Mystic Falls could be protected by the magic of the witches who keep it, but the truth is that the friends have lost touch over the years.

They don’t talk about Elena. Caroline has known for a while that Elena chose to turn, to become like her and Stefan. Bonnie never talked about why, but Caroline doesn’t have to ask to know that. And she also knows that Elena never understood this thing with the three of them. She remembers receiving a post card in the mail one day – with no return address like always – and all it had said was: _Is it true?_

Caroline never wrote back.

 _She didn’t have to._

But her friend isn’t there to catch up, Caroline knows that much. And when she brings her back to the house, Bonnie tells Tyler about his mother.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “No one in the compound even knew she was sick.” She hands Tyler a silver locket, a keepsake from his mother. He takes it and leaves the room.

When Caroline says goodbye to Bonnie, the two hug, and Caroline gets the distinct feeling it will be the last time.

-

 _Tyler swims for hours that night._

Caroline and Stefan wait for him up at the house instead of in their usual spot down by the water.

When he returns to the house, he is out of breath, sopping wet, and he kisses Caroline hard, and then Stefan.

“Promise me,” he says, red rims around his eyes. “Promise me we’ll never live like that, like fucking rats in a cage.”

Stefan grips Tyler by the neck. “I promise.” He looks at Caroline, and she places her hand on his.

“We promise,” she says.

-

One spring, they buy an old house in Louisiana that Stefan has lived in before.

Caroline loves its endless hallways and turn-of-the-century architecture, and she keeps making Lestat jokes, but Tyler whispers Louis into Stefan’s ear whenever he moves inside him, and he thinks that much should be obvious to Caroline.

They fuck in every room in the house, and it’s so goddamn hot that there just isn’t anything else to do to forget the heat. Caroline watches the two of them move against each other, hips against hips. She lets Stefan draw her and Tyler, a hobby he picked up at the end of their stay in Vermont, and one which Tyler had encouraged. They hang the sketches, no matter how pornographic, all around the house.

“It’s not like we get any visitors anyway,” Caroline reasons, and Tyler just laughs.

Stefan tells ghost stories. He lived in the house from ’63 to ’64, and there had been an apparition that would visit him at night.

“Was she naked?” Tyler asks.

Caroline punches him in the shoulder. “Don’t be such a guy!”

“What?” Tyler protests. “It’s a legitimate question!”

Beside them on the bed, Stefan laughs. “Only sometimes,” he says, by way of humoring Tyler.

“See?!” He sticks his tongue out at Caroline.

She rolls her eyes at him. “Continue, please,” she says to Stefan. “Ignore the overgrown child to my left and finish your story.”

Stefan tells them how she used to float up and down these very halls, and even on occasions in this very bedroom. Caroline shivers, and Tyler instinctively looks to the door. Stefan swears that she would hum, up and down the halls each night. Sometimes she would move things or rearrange furniture when he wasn’t home.

At the time, Stefan blamed Damon, who was known to run with witches. In the ’50s, Sheila Bennett had shown Stefan the whimsical side of magic, and he wouldn’t put it past his brother to go to great lengths to get under his skin.

Later, after he left the house and went off to Europe with Lexi, he found out that Damon had been out of the country at the time.

“So she was real after all,” Tyler says.

Stefan shrugs. “I think so,” he reasons. “I mean, I can’t think of any other explanation. I know that spirits exist, and we all know Bonnie made contact with the witches from Mystic Falls, but a haunting is something else entirely. And she’s the only one of her kind I’ve ever come across.”

“Where do you think she went?” Caroline asks.

“Maybe she finally went home.”

Caroline doesn’t ask where that might be, only curls closer to Stefan and pulls Tyler’s arm tighter around her middle.

-

They only go to the west coast once.

Caroline wants to see the Hollywood sign and watch the sunset on the beach. Stefan protests, as he has no patience for movie stars and high fashion, but Tyler manages to convince him.

They’re there only one week. Their stay is interrupted on the night of the full moon, when Tyler breaks loose and almost kills Caroline before Stefan manages to tranquilize him with a wolfsbane-laced dart.

 _They never go back_.

-

 

After Hollywood, they have better luck in New York.

Tyler immediately feels at home in the city, and in those first few months he often leaves Caroline and Stefan alone at night to wander the streets.

Stefan tells them stories about himself and Lexi, how they practically lived at the hotel Chelsea for several stints in the sixties and seventies. He tells them about all the famous people they met _and compelled_ , about how Lexi was almost a _Chelsea Girl_ and how later they were there when Sid killed Nancy.

Caroline insists that they rent out the same room where Stefan and Lexi stayed. They start drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes. It comes naturally, but Caroline thinks they’re subconsciously trying to recreate that bygone era. Tyler draws the line at accompanying Caroline to poetry readings, and Stefan agrees.

Caroline takes photographs of the city and of her companions. Stefan borrows them and turns them into paintings. Tyler sleeps too much during the day and still wanders the streets after nightfall, but not as often as in the beginning.

Eventually, they each take their own lovers.

Caroline meets a Brazilian intern named Leda at an art gallery. Leda is unlike anyone that Caroline has ever known and she relishes in the idea of Caroline, Tyler, and Stefan all together: sharing a life, sharing their bed. Caroline likes to listen to Leda marvel at their life in her native tongue. She doesn’t understand the words, but she feels their meaning deep in her belly.

Caroline knows that Leda would like to join them, but the truth about what they are is something that Leda will never know and that Caroline would never think to burden her with. Instead, she teaches Leda how to take photographs, a practice which Leda insists she has always been terrible at. Caroline disagrees, and she does so vehemently in a bastardized rudimentary version of Portuguese, which Leda has been helping her to perfect.

Eventually Caroline gives up and, gesturing at Leda’s work splayed out on the floor, simply says, “belo.”

Before Leda goes back to Brazil, she makes Caroline promise that the three of them will come to visit her.

 _Someday._

Tyler takes up with a hometown girl from Queens, who, as it turns out, has no patience at all for their _Three’s Company_ living arrangements. But Penelope is gorgeous, and Stefan and Caroline can tell that Tyler is taken with her. However, it isn’t long until she tries to convince him to move in with her and starts telling him that she’s in love.

He lets Caroline compel her after an evening of too much wine and bread. She’s already sleepy and complacent and it feels less like the betrayal that it is. Caroline crawls into the oversized arm chair with Tyler after she sends Penelope home, assures him that the girl will never remember so much as his name.

“Like you never existed…” she trails off, and Tyler kisses her.

They make love on the floor before Stefan comes home.

That night, when he returns, the vampire can sense something is off, and he sleeps out on the balcony, letting the two of them have the bed until the city sounds drive him inside and into their warm arms.

Stefan, _of course_ , is more discrete about his exploits. Some nights he goes out, coming back at odd hours and smelling of sex, sometimes even blood.

 _This is all that they know, and all that they ask._

He’s always been the most secretive of the three of them, the one to keep things to himself. It’s a part of him they have come to understand well over the years. Tyler will often pounce on him when he enters the room, pinning him against the wall and pressing his nose to his neck, drinking in his scent, grinding their hips together.

“Come,” Caroline will usually say, and reach her hands out to them, dreamy-eyed and pink-lipped.

 _They always comply._

One evening Caroline spies Stefan kissing a man in the alleyway on her way home.

 _Later_ , she remarks to Tyler just how much the stranger had looked like Damon.

-

 _Caroline only leaves them once._

She makes up some story about where she’s going and when she’ll be back and then she buys a one-way ticket to a city she’s never heard of. For six hours on the train she watches a family of five laugh and play games, tease each other and take care of each other. The mother, a woman with kind eyes and her hair pulled back carelessly, kisses each of her three children on the forehead before they fall asleep.

Caroline will never have a family, and the only family she has is a six-hour ride away and getting further by the minute.

She gets off at the next stop and boards the first train back.

When she returns to their apartment in the small sleepy, New Hampshire town they’ve called home for the past six months, she finds the two of them asleep, curled against one another in the bed.

Caroline kicks off her shoes, whispering, “I’m home.”

 _They will never know she even left._

-

Stefan is always talking about how time moves in a circle. The others are still relatively young and to them, immortality is still something that they can’t fully grasp. It hangs in the air, existing in the orbit around them, but it does not yet consume them in the way that it consumes Stefan.

“Time dooms us to make the same mistakes over and over.” Stefan often says things like this, and Caroline dismisses them. But then she remembers the man in the alley, and she thinks that Stefan might be right in some ways.

“We’re not a mistake, are we?” Caroline draws circles on Tyler’s back with her fingers, her chin propped on her elbow. The wolf sleeps soundly beside them, oblivious to the conversation and the world.

Stefan catches her eye, and Caroline knows the answer already. “Never,” he says with an ease that has only come once or twice before in his long life.

After a long while, Stefan says, “Sometimes I just wish I could do it all over.”

“What?” Caroline asks.

He looks at her, his answer simple.

“Life.”

-

“Where do you think we should go next?” Tyler asks Caroline on a sleepy morning.

Caroline, who is unaware that the game has begun, responds naturally, shrugging. “Where do _you_ think we should go?”

“Repetition,” he teases, and Caroline groans.

Stefan walks into the room. “Questions?” he asks, having heard them from the kitchen.

“Are you always such a cheat?” Caroline retorts, sticking her tongue out at Tyler. He puts his hand over her mouth, and her tongue darts back in, but only momentarily. She sticks it back out again, wetting his palm where it covers her lips.

“Ew?” he says, allowing the sound to rise so that it sounds like a question, when in fact, it is not.

“Statement.” She calls him on it.

“Why should I answer you, when you still haven’t answered me?” he recovers quickly.

Caroline takes a moment to consider his original query, knowing that hesitation is also against the rules, but not seeming to care. “Can’t you just decide? Why do I have to do it?”

“How am I supposed to know?” Tyler grins and kisses her shoulder.

“Shouldn’t we figure this out along the way?” Stefan plops himself down on the end of the bed, stretching over their feet and legs.

“But isn’t that the way we’ve always done it?” It’s Caroline this time, who slides her foot from underneath Stefan and kicks him gently on the side of the head.

“Is there any reason to change that now?” Stefan responds.

“Whose hand is that?” Tyler interjects, and both Caroline and Stefan look at each other.

“Can’t you figure it out?” Caroline grins, her hand joining Stefan’s at Tyler’s thigh.

Tyler squirms a little when their cool hands slide a little higher. “Are you two ever going to stop torturing me?”

“Never,” they say in unison.

-

When they finally leave New England, Stefan finds himself traveling familiar southern roads.

They pass a sign for Mystic Falls, and he looks to the passenger seat to find Caroline eyeing him. Tyler, relaxed in the back seat, is doing the same. Caroline nods, a sideways smile just barely hidden from view. Tyler just shrugs and opens his hands, consenting in his own way.

The town is just as empty as when they left it, and terribly overgrown. A decade or so goes by, and nature has taken her back.

They return to the boarding house, which looks almost just as trimmed and landscaped as it had been on the day they left.

“Damon,” Stefan offers by way of explanation. And it’s obvious that his brother has been back more than once. But when they inspect the house, and note the thickness of the dust on every surface, it’s clear that it’s been a while since his last visit.

Tyler immediately makes his way to Damon’s liquor cabinet, which, as it turns out, is fully stocked.

“We are definitely staying.”

-

Tyler and Stefan find Caroline asleep in his bed.

They have slept in many beds, and in many towns, but none have been quite as good as this one on that first night with all three of them together.

The two of them stand at the doorway, watching her sleep, as they have done on many occasions.

“God, she’s beautiful,” Stefan says. He looks at Tyler, but this time Tyler is looking at him.

They kiss, slow and easy, _like coming home_ , and when they’re both breathless and feeling just as tired as their travel mate, they crawl into the bed with her to sleep.

In the morning, Caroline wakes, sandwiched between the two of them. She rouses Stefan first, with a kiss, and then Tyler in the same manner. There is nothing more she would like to do right now than christen this new bed as their own. She is quite aware that Stefan has many memories of his own in this room and that it is time to give him a new one.

Stefan slides his hand up her thigh, stopping when he meets her white cotton panties.

Tyler watches them, and Caroline closes her eyes when Stefan slips two fingers underneath the elastic.

Tyler kisses her, urges her to open her eyes. “Caroline,” he says, his voice thick with sex. “Look at me.”

She fixes her gaze on him, meeting Tyler’s eyes as Stefan brings her over with just the touch of his fingers. She comes, a gasp at the back of her throat and Tyler’s lips grazing hers.

-

Later, with his two companions sleeping soundly, Stefan escapes into the garden. He wanders along the stone walls and through the woods out back, and he finds himself much farther from the house than he anticipated.

 _He smells the hybrid first_.

Before Stefan has a chance to react, Klaus has his hands on him and presses him against the rough bark of a tree, his elbow at the back of Stefan’s neck, lips grazing against his ear.

“Have you ever drained a werewolf completely?” Klaus asks him, craning around so that he can fix his eyes on Stefan’s, trapping him in his gaze.

Stefan pleads with him. “I’ll go with you. Just leave them here. You don’t have to do this.”

“Aren’t you supposed to answer in a question, pet?” Klaus’ grip tightens, and all the air goes out of Stefan’s lungs. He’s been watching them this whole time. _Of course he has._

“No,” Stefan mutters.

“Yes,” Klaus answers, a grin spreading across his oddly cherub-like face. “Now you’re going to go in there, and you’re going to be _very, very,_ hungry…”

-

Caroline kisses him when he walks into the room. “There you are,” she says. “We were just missing you.”

Stefan grabs her by the shoulders and pulls back. He leans in, drags his tongue across her lips in an obscene fashion. “I’m hungry.” Caroline’s eyes snap up, studying him, and she can see what she had missed before.

She calls Tyler’s name, a warning, and struggles against the vampire who shoves her hard and pins her to the wall with a broken chair leg, plunging it through her shoulder and the wall behind her, one hand squeezing her neck tightly.

Tyler jumps up, but as Stefan stands between him and the doorway, there isn’t anywhere for him to go.

Caroline struggles. “Stefan,” she gasps. “Listen to me, don’t do this. I know you’re still in there.”

It’s useless. Klaus’s compulsion is potent, and Stefan is on Tyler in an instant, his elbow against Tyler’s throat, trapping him against a book case. “Don’t be afraid,” Stefan whispers. His eyes go red and he sinks his fangs into the werewolf’s neck before Tyler’s legs give out and the two of them go crashing to the floor.

He drinks slowly, and Caroline struggles against the wall, unable to free herself from where Stefan has lodged the wooden stake. The sound of Tyler fighting, gasping for air and groaning in pain, kicking his feet against the floor as Stefan drinks from him, is almost more than she can bear. “No, no, no, no!” she cries, the scent of blood filling her nostrils. She calls both of their names, and kicks against the wall to no avail. “Fuck!”

She can tell that Tyler is growing weak, and he stops moving, the sounds of his struggles going muted. Stefan’s soft, hoarse moans of pleasure, and the wet, sucking sound of him feeding, rise to the surface before giving way to a low growl. He sits up on his knees and leans back, a scream tearing from the back of his throat. He doubles over. Tyler, still alive, and able to heal quickly now that he is not being drained dry, scampers back, letting Stefan fall to the floor, writhing in pain.

“Tyler!” Caroline reaches out to him and he is there in a flash, yanking the stake from the wall and freeing her.

She kneels over Stefan, turning him over to find that he is barely breathing.

“I’m sorry,” he gasps for breath, reaches out to touch her face, leaving bloody fingerprints upon her cheek. “I’m sorry.”

-

If Klaus is still lurking, he has made himself scarce for the time being.

They put Stefan into the bed, and he protests. “Leave me,” he says. “He’ll be back.”

Caroline watches as the color drains from his face, tucks the blanket under his chin, and she’s never been more certain that Klaus is done with Stefan.

 _For good._

-

“Is he dying?” Tyler finds her in the parlor.

“I don’t know,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s like he’s been poisoned. Like he’s been bitten.”

Tyler’s eyebrows knit in confusion. “That doesn’t make any sense,” he offers. “Both of you have fed from me before.”

“Not that much,” Caroline reasons. “A little foreplay here and there, but never that much.”

Tyler stands, shaking his head, unwilling to believe that his blood could be that deadly.

“Tyler, he almost killed you, almost drained you completely. The fact is, we don’t have any idea what that could do to a vampire, or to a werewolf for that matter. Before he stopped, before he got sick, you stopped moving and… I couldn’t even hear your heart beat.” She reaches up, slides her hands from his chest to his neck and looks into his eyes. “I thought you were dead.”

Tyler presses his forehead to hers. “Me too,” he agrees. “So what? Is this is like some kind of natural werewolf defense mechanism?”

“I don’t know,” Caroline kisses him.

“If he dies,” Tyler breathes, his eyes closed.

“I know,” Caroline says. “I know.”

-

The two spend the next day and night watching over Stefan. He shivers and then he sweats, he swears at them and then he reaches out for their hands. Stefan vomits up blood, and the two of them take turns cleaning it up. Caroline hunts and brings him animal blood from the forest, but he can’t keep anything down. Tyler even picks apples and other fruits from the trees outside, thinking that maybe human food, anything other than blood, will help.

 _It doesn’t_.

Caroline remembers all of the things that her mother used to say to her when she was sick as a child and she says those things to Stefan now, though she can’t imagine they are of any comfort to him. Tyler sits next to the two of them on the bed, Caroline clutching Stefan in her lap as she sings to him.

The two of them fall asleep to the sound of her song.

-

In the morning, Caroline and Tyler are alone in the bed when they wake up. They find Stefan sitting at his desk poring over his old journals, light filtering through the curtains. Caroline goes to him, touches his face, and can see that his skin is back to its usual pallor. Tyler kneels and puts a hand on his neck, searching his eyes for any sign of compulsion.

They take him to the shower, peeling his clothes from him until he’s naked and standing under a stream of hot water, a bar of soap in hand. Once he’s scrubbed clean and dressed, they immediately discuss leaving, of never coming back, but Stefan agrees with Caroline’s earlier assessment: Klaus won’t be back this time. They should stay.

“I don’t remember much,” he tells them. “Klaus didn’t want me to. But I’m sure he won’t be back this time. I can feel it.”

Caroline swallows hard, remembering how scared she’d been over the past couple of days – for all of them. “I hope you’re right,” she tells him.

“Me too,” he nods. “In the meantime, I seem to remember some fresh blood?”

“In the kitchen,” Tyler tells him. “The fridge.”

Caroline kisses Stefan before he leaves the room and her fingers tangle in his until he slips out of her grasp and into the main hallway.

“I can’t believe it,” Tyler says, running his hand through his hair. “I cannot fucking believe it.”

Caroline looks at the disheveled state of the bed where Tyler sits, to the spot where she was sure she would find Stefan dead in the morning and shakes her head. “I know.”

But then, something at the edge of the desk catches her eye. At the same time, she can hear the front door being opened.

 _Stefan’s ring._

She runs, Tyler following her, to meet Stefan at the door – to stop him – but it’s too late, he’s already standing in the open threshold, bathed in sunlight.

“How…” the word echoes through the room.

They rush to his side, but when they reach the doorway, Caroline grabs Tyler’s hand tightly, stops him from going after Stefan, who takes another certain step, his face turned toward the sky. “Wait!” she says, her voice betraying a hint of understanding.

“What’s happening?” Tyler asks, looks at her.

“Can’t you smell it?” Caroline says, her voice suddenly flat, calm.

Tyler looks to Stefan and then back to Caroline. “Smell it? Smell what?” he asks. “What are you talking about, Caroline?”

Caroline never takes her eyes from Stefan, and she squeezes Tyler’s hand.

Stefan turns to them, a smile spreading across his lips.

 _He looks like he might laugh_.

Caroline closes her eyes, terrified of what she is about to say.

“ _He’s human._ ”

 _-fin_


End file.
